Pitching. Cutting etc.

Quoted text begins.I was trying to describe what I see when I look at some cut stone in new
buildings here in New York. It looks as lifeless as poured concrete.
End of quote.

well, the old boys detested the bland slick surface as well.
they were concerned with how the stones were affected by light -and
how they affected it.
rather than have the light glance off glaringly, they preferred to
have the stones accept it, so the face of each block received a final
hand-tooled texture . this was called "boasting" because each
mason/stonecutter had his own distinctive and discernible pattern.
the overall effect though was consistent. you can see good examples
of this on the St Thomas Episcopal Church at 5th and 53rd there in NY.

in Jerusalem's old city every new building must be faced with stone.
this is generally done with sawn slabs and hand tooling is employed
there too to remove the machined surface.

I share your admiration of the surface obtained by pitching. and it
is a satisfying action to perform -when done successfully. there are
some interesting posts on the subject in the archive:
( http://aboutstone.org/cgi-bin/xht/xsrch?words=pitching&config=conv )

Tomas